


Fly on the Wall

by Rowan_Sprawls



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Queer Themes, Smart Martin, Smartin, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Transcript Format, queer eye, the fear of being exposed and having your secrets known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24691030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowan_Sprawls/pseuds/Rowan_Sprawls
Summary: Case #0140608 Statement of Darren Murray regarding several encounters with a housefly. Original statement given August 6th, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	Fly on the Wall

[CLICK]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Darren Murray regarding several encounters with a housefly. Original statement given August 6th, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

So, I live In London now, but originally I'm from Oklahoma. A city called Pryor Creek. It's barely a city, actually. In fact, it might not even be 'Pryor Creek' anymore. Mailmen just call it 'Pryor' now because it kept getting confused with place called 'Pond Creek.' Seems like a dumb thing to get mixed up, but what do I know?

So, Pryor Creek leans a little on the poor side. I thought the new data center opening up would change that, but it never really ended up putting money back into the town, sadly.

I'm not sure how well you know this, but the poor places in America also tend to be the most conservative. I don't know if that's true here, too, but it's true in America. And Pryor Creek isn't the most backwards place in Oklahoma - not by a long shot - but it's still in a pretty red county. It’s got it fair share of bumpkins. And my family? Well, they're some of the bumpkinest in town.

Ok, so I'm sort of talking around the issue here, but long story short I left the country for a reason. I'm gay. Like, flaming. I've loved Broadway musicals since I was 9. Cats is one of my favorites. I'm not too big on Oklahoma, ironically. I - I wore a pink leotard to Pride. Ok, ok. I'm rambling. You get the picture. I needed to live somewhere where my family couldn't visit too often. They didn't know, and I knew it would be nothing but trouble if they did.

I knew it would be trouble...

Against my better instincts, I agreed to stay with them for a month over the Summer last year. I work as a schoolteacher so getting the time off wasn't an issue. Lucky for me I was single at the time. Well, maybe not lucky, but you get what I mean.

The trip started out about as well as you could expect. My family and I talked and reminisced. I guess I'm what some other people might call 'straight-passing,' so for anything other than political conversation I was golden.

It did get a bit awkward when mom asked what church I went to here in London. For obvious reasons, religion and I don't really get along. I just made something up that didn't sound too Catholic. She's not good with computers so it's not like she would look it up, and the rest of my family wouldn't care enough to help her if she tried.

It was about three days in when the weirdness started. I was sitting alone in the guestroom - what used to be my bedroom - when I noticed a fly up on the wall. It was just sitting there.

Now this next part is going to sound crazy, but I promise this is going somewhere. I'm right about all of this. I know I am.

So - okay here it comes - so you know how when you see a fly sitting still, you get this idea in your head that you can sneak up on it? Flies are all instinct, right? We know that. So if you just move real slow, you can get close without setting off the instincts. Then you try to swat at them fast enough that they don't have time to react. That's how you deal with flies. Everyone knows that, no one questions it.

But when I saw this little housefly, it felt... different. Different than any other fly in the world. I knew, just by looking at this fly, that there was no way I could sneak up on it. It was looking at me. The eyes in a fly's head don't ever move, but I swear to high Heaven this thing had its eyes trained on me. And not only did it see me, it knew what it was seeing. I could tell that it could tell that I was about to get up and swat it.

I tried anyway. I wasn't sneaky, but I was quick. It didn't matter. My ass wasn't off the bed before that fly had slipped right into the vent.

That was stupid, right? Stupid and crazy, that's how I sound right now. Just you wait.

So now we're going on a week and half. It's late in the morning. I was alone in the room again. That happened a lot over the trip. My dad and my brother both worked out the industrial park. Everyone in town did. When you have one of those jobs, vacation time is sparse. I only saw them at night. Mom and I could have spent time together while she was out shopping all day, but, honestly, we didn't get along that well.

Anyway, here I am, house all to myself, and, well... Ok. So I'm a healthy young man and I've got a lot of energy. You see where this is going? I was "pert as a ruttin' buck" as my grandpa used to say. Alright maybe that was a bit far. I'm just saying I took advantage of my privacy. Looked up some guys on my phone and... Had at it.

Now I want to be perfectly clear. My phone was muted. I was on mobile data with my own phone plan. The house was empty. The door was shut, the blinds were closed, and I - even more than most men - know how to be 'quiet.' There was no way anyone saw what I was doing, and no way for anyone to tell what I was doing it to.

Except for that housefly. I was sitting there, you know, satisfied, and then I look up over my head and I see that fly on the wall again. I knew it was the same fly. Don't ask me how. I just knew. I could feel it looking at me again, and for some reason that embarrassed me. I covered myself on instinct. It was like when your family comes in without knocking. I was half tempted to make excuses to the thing.

Making excuses felt pointless though. Not because it was, you know, a fly, but because... it knew. It knew what it was looking at. Then it flew away.

I still sound nuts. I know I sound totally nuts. That's ok. The next part is why I'm here.

The next night I was sitting with the family for dinner. It was mom's buttered noodles. Best you've had in your life. I was sitting across from dad. We were talking about something that happened when I was in third grade. My parents liked the story - they thought it was funny in that 'rebellious little kid' sort of way. But they left out the part where dad beat me for it when I got home. They left out the extra attention I got from my Sunday school teacher after that, or the way they let my brother bully me a while after because they thought I deserved it. It was a fine story on its own, though

So I start talking with dad about this or that. Something kinda related to the other story. I can't remember. I was just focused trying to keep the conversation away from anything heavy. On a whim I looked behind dad. I saw the housefly again. It was on one of the kitchen cabinets. But this time it wasn't looking at me. I wasn't getting that sense anymore. I recognized it it instantly, but suddenly it was just a fly again. That seemed like good news to me, all things considered.

While I was looking at this thing, dad perks up his head. It was like he just heard a noise or something. I don't know. At the time I thought nothing of it. But right after he asks that age-old question:

"You have a girlfriend yet?"

My dad may not have gone to college, but he wasn't an idiot. He knows that's a pointless question. I have never said 'yes' in response to that question. Even when I hadn't quite figured out I was gay, when I was out disappointing a girl or two, I never said 'yes.' But he chose this moment to ask anyway.

So I said what I always said, "No."

"Well, I figured you'd get better luck once you got out of this little town. Guess not."

"I guess not."

Then my older brother chimed in. Rick is his name. He just came back from a tour of duty. I know a few vets, and then tend to be a little on the tense side. Not Rick. When Rick came back, he treated his return to civilian life like the bouncer just waved him in. Nothing mattered, and everything was an excuse to drink and make a fool of himself. He responded about how you would expect.

"Come on! Not getting any of that limey puss? Can't get anyone to show you their teas and crumpets?"

And he laughed and mom was appalled and hit him a few times, which made him laugh more.

"Nope," I told him. And that was that.

After that, couple more days passed with not a lot happening. I kept seeing the fly, always sitting a safe distance away from me, but otherwise things felt normal. Normalish. You know, I thought I was crazy about the fly. No that's not right. Not crazy. I started to think maybe I was projecting paranoid hormonal stuff onto some pest problem. I didn't even really know it was the same fly every time. I couldn't have! Who can tell flies apart? It was just me being a bit of a basket case.

But then I started getting these weird feelings during our dinners. Dad wasn't looking at me the same way. He was leering as often as he was looking. Normally mom was obnoxiously pleasant in that way that born-again Christians are, but her mask kept slipping. She looked confused sometimes, and sad. My brother was the worst. There was something nagging at him. Something wasn't funny.

Maybe that was me being a basket case again. Maybe I needed more time alone.

But no. At the end of week two, mom started interrogating me over dinner about my church in London. Now, remember, I had lived here for years growing up. When I stepped out of line, I got bruises. But even 'normal' kids step out of line, so of course I did. I'm a bullshitter. I can spin a lie off the cuff like its nothing. But this time, I could tell she wasn't buying it. I had known idea why she wasn't buying it but she wasn't buying. Even dad was getting in on the interrogation. I filled in every detail and I kept it consistent but I couldn't convince them. Dad was about to throw something at my head. I knew that look.

That night my brother took me aside in the hall. I was on my way to brush my teeth. Nothing crazy. Nothing suspicious. He looked me dead in the eye. He looked frustrated with me, maybe a little confused, and he asked me:

"Is there something you're not telling us?"

Its hard to explain how that question feels to someone like me, where I'm from. Because, yes! Obviously! That suspicion is dangerous to me. Legitimately dangerous. What did they know? How much did they know? How'd they find out? Did I tip them off? How could I? What did they see?

I was thinking all this standing there in the hall, probably looking real suspicious to my brother. I realized at that moment that my family had agreed to pay for my plane ticket home. I got the sense I was about to be on the hook for that. I'd have to tighten my belt for a bit to manage that.

I'm an idiot, right? That's how this story sounds. Why would you ever come home to these violent bigots? But I thought all that was behind us, right? I'm a grown man. I go on dates with my own car, my parents aren't trying to 'discipline' me anymore, I thought that meant it was safe now. I thought, maybe, if I came home every once in a while, I could pretend I had a happy family. Other people have those and they seem to think it's nice. Why not me?

And it would have been a perfect plan, but something was happening. It had all gone wrong. I was giving myself away somehow. I didn't know how far it had gone, but it was going. I kept thinking I could hold my hand some other way or cover some part of my face to dodge suspicion. Maybe if I walked slower or fixed my posture then they'd think they were the paranoid ones. I would have taken anything.

The next morning, I woke up and my phone was missing. I looked all over the house for it and couldn't find it. I knew I went to sleep next to the thing.

Then I saw Rick through the porch window. He had my phone. He was trying to guess my password. Honestly, out of everyone here, he probably had the best shot at it. I went out to confront him. He didn't even look up at me when I stepped through the door. I snatched my phone out of his hands.

Suddenly, he winds up like he's about to hit me. I swear, nothing had happened until then. I'd not said anything rude or strange. I'd done nothing wrong! But my brother here was about to lay me out under our porch swing for taking my own phone back. The look in his eyes was wild. I can't tell you quite how but he looked... desperate for something.

I looked at my phone. Locked for two and a half hours, of course. I like my privacy, so I set it so you can't see names or text when people send me messages. No notifications for dating apps. No way he saw anything while he had it. He was just wasting his own time, but that was a problem to him anyway.

He said, "You're being awfully sneaky for someone with nothing to hide."

I asked him what he meant and he just said I knew what he was talking about. And I did. But did he? Really? How? I would have asked, but I was starting to get a lump in my throat.

Late that afternoon, dad came home and took his spot on the couch. I took a seat next to him. Right that moment he got up to grab a beer.

He popped it open and stood at the kitchen door with it. The tv lit his eyes up surprisingly bright in that shadowy doorway. Dad always had these big bug eyes. When he opened them wide, it looked like they were about to roll right out. I think he said it was because of the glass contacts he used to wear.

When I made him angry as a kid, he'd open his eyes as wide as he could to try to scare me. It usually worked. His eyes were just as wide now as back then, there in the kitchen door, but I could tell they weren't angry. These eyes were open wide just to see. To see me. And they weren't content. The were shaking and straining. They were... hungry. I swear in that man was trying see right into me.

And then he said, in a strangely casual voice, "Be honest. Do you have a girlfriend yet?"

Of course, I said, "No."

"Well why not?"

I told I didn’t know. I said that I just haven’t had the time, or something to that effect.

"Really. What have you been up to?"

I explained that I had been moving and job hunting and all that, and that getting yourself sorted in a new countries is a long process.  
"Right. Bet you never had a minute to yourself, did you?"

"I mean, I guess I had some time here and there, but I was pretty tired out. What's all this about, anyway?"

I knew as soon as I said it that that last sentence that it was a mistake. I almost caught myself but I couldn't manage. I was in such a hurry to get those searching eyes off of me. I can't remember if he blinked.

"What this is about is that you're a worthless sack who’s lying to his old man."

I wasn't even lying. I was telling him all the reasons I hadn't been dating. Had I let a pronoun slip? No, I didn't. He just wasn't hearing me. He already knew something. Before I could defend myself, he said,

"Get off my couch before I kick your ass."

There was no humor in how he said it. It wasn't even a threat. He was telling me to give him an excuse. I got up. I had the feeling if I went back to the guest room, my mother would have something to say, too. So I walked out of the house.

I didn't have a car of my own, but we didn't live too far from this bar called Lot Lizards so I at least had somewhere familiar to go. Me and my friends were there all the time in high school because one of us was related to the bartender. We never got carded.

And when I walked in again after all these years, speak of the devil. There he was. Freddy Red Eagle. I'm not sure how much Osage was actually in him, but he still had the last name. We never stopped making fun of him for it. I know it makes me look bad but, honestly, I knew him better as 'Feathers.' I wasn't going to call him that now but that's how I knew him. He was sitting right at the bar with his aunt right across from him, filling his glass.

I was still a little stressed out so I wasn't really in the mood to catch up with an old friend, but I couldn't exactly avoid it either. I sat down, we made those high pitched 'surprised' voices about each other. You know the drill. We caught up, but it was a bit awkward with all the details I had to skip about what's been happening while I was in town.

Then Freddy's aunt started treating me to some free drinks. That got a conversation going. I started talking about how my family was treating me weird, though I was sparse on the details. I wasn't about to out myself here after all that trouble I went through to keep it under wraps.

But he had a lot of sympathy for me anyway, which helped me feel better for a while. To help get my mind off it, he started telling his college stories. Normally it reflects poorly on someone if they don't make it out of Mayes County in their 20s, but Freddy was an exception. He was working some tech job out at the data center. I know he told me just what he did, but I could hardly understand a word of it. He always was the smart one. He wasn't out of shape either, and in the light I swore I could see a hit of those nice native cheekbones under his light olive skin. Coming out was starting to seem like a better idea.

I mean, as far as I knew Freddy was still a big time conservative. We all were. But I was calling him 'Feathers' last time I saw him, and he was a smart guy. Maybe he'd learned enough to change, too.

So we kept the drinks coming and the night went on. We were making a mess and laughing. By the end of the night, Freddy's aunt had busted out the karaoke machine and we were leaning on each other's shoulders, singing off-key duets to a bunch of old bikers. It was a blast.

Then I had to stumble home. Back to the house that somehow knew me. I was out of it anyway, but I felt a different kind of sick walking through that door.

I don’t remember going to sleep. I remember waking up, though. It was definitely passed noon. My head felt like it was going to split open. When I opened my eyes, I saw my mother standing over me. And when I say “over me,” I mean over me. She had her legs pressed against the edge of my bed. She was looking down at me with this dead, piercing stare. I jumped a bit when I saw it. Her brow was furrowed in this sad, concerned sort of way. It’s like she was staring at my corpse.

She told me "it’s not too late to be saved."

I asked her what she meant.

She just told me "you don't have to pretend. Everyone has some kind of sin or… perversion in them. The Lord will forgive you, if you just let yourself be saved. Meet the family outside when you’re ready to be honest with us.”

I got dressed and stepped out. First thing I saw was dad on the porch swing with a bottle of beer. Then I saw was Rick’s fist in my peripheral. 

I lost my senses as I fell. I think I was knocked out for moment. Next thing I remember is instinctively trying to get back on my feet, and then feeling these debilitating shocks to my torso as Rick kicked me back down. I was reeling and coughing. I couldn’t breathe. I could here mom screaming at Rick to stop as my hearing came back to me. 

I heard Rick yell back that I’m a bastard, and that I’m getting what I deserve.

I stumbled back onto my feet. As the world started to come back into focus, I saw the beer bottle fly passed my head and break against one of the posts the held up the porch. Mom made an exasperated sound. After a few blinks and a deep breath, I was finally able to look dad in the eyes.  
His eyes were wide again. They weren’t hungry anymore. They found what they sought in me, and they focused on it. The shame in me. That’s what they saw. The longer he looked at me, the more naked, and weak, and ugly I felt. My mind shriveled in his gaze. Somewhere in my head I felt – I hoped, even – that he could reduce me to ash with those eyes. He did me a mercy when he finally spoke up and distracted me from that feeling.

I don’t quite remember what he said. It all just ran together. I know he accused me of betraying the family, and betraying God, and lying to everyone. He said I was going out and trying to put my “sickness” on others. There was something about the work he put in, and how he didn’t do it so I could run away to England and be a faggot. He used that word. That much I remember quite clearly.

He knew. And I knew that he knew. But there was something different in the feeling hearing it. I was too weak and tired to do anything but hang my head.

Mom said God would still show me mercy. I noticed a little flutter in Dad’s eyes when he told me my family didn’t have that kind of mercy. Something in his cold bigotry broke when he demanded I leave because there was “no home for me here anymore.” It almost gave me hope, but the malice in his eyes wasn’t gone for long. He stared at me again, and my brother and mother stared with them. They hated what they saw.

Drained and reeling, I just limped away. My family didn’t stop looking at me until I had finally left the street I grew up on. I needed a ride. I couldn’t think of anything else, I just needed a ride to the airport. I limped back out to Lot Lizards. It was the only place in town where I knew someone. It was reassuring, seeing Freddy's car out front. It was too early to be drinking so I guessed he was there to help with set up before the weekend regulars came in. He was always helping out his family. He always seemed so kind.

I opened the door. Freddy and his aunt turned to me slowly. Their faces froze into a mask of hostility. Their eyes got wider. They started to see through me. It had happened. They saw my shame now, too.

As I watched them stare me down, I saw a little fly come off from the side. It buzzed by my ear and flew out the door. I recognized it instantly. It was that fly. It landed on the light above door. A spine-chilling feeling stopped me dead. It was looking at me again. It knew what was happening, and again I knew that it knew, and I could feel the joy that knowledge brought it.

It was the fly. All of this was the fly. I don't know how, but it was clear. The fly was telling everyone about me somehow. It was changing them to know, or to want to know. It was controlling them. That fly was whispering in everyone’s ear and drawing their fearsome eyes to me. And I knew in that moment that it did it all to be able to witness this. It wanted to see the last bit of hope I had here slip from my hands. It looked with strange and oppressive eyes, drawing in every ounce of the shame, humiliation, and suffering it had brought me. It mocked me with its existence and reveled in every naked and helpless detail of my lowest moment. The only thing that twisted me more than my fear and embarrassment was the inevitability of it. Any motion I made would be seen an assessed by this unblinking insect. I could not trick it or avoid it or kill it. Even knowing what it was and what it was doing, I was completely powerless.

I think you can guess what happened next. Freddy accused me of trying to 'turn' him last night. He and his aunt called me disgusting, laid a few more hits on me, and forced me out of the bar. I could feel the fly's eyes on me. It watched every moment, swallowing my rejection and abandonment into its vision.

I made my way to a corner and called a cab to take me to the airport. The fly followed me, but not in the random way a fly does. It hovered behind me, always an exact distance away. Just out of my reach. It came into the cab with me. The driver didn't seem to notice. He seemed sympathetic when he saw what a mess I was. By the end of the ride, I could tell the fly had been talking to him. He was short with me, and very wary of my hands.

It followed me all the way through airport security. The TSA put me under particular scrutiny, to the point I nearly missed my flight. I was starting to feel like it might follow me forever now. I feared it would turn my every secret and mistake into an aura that infected every person I encountered. Thankfully, that didn't happen. It left me and flew off as soon as I started to board the plane.

And that's my story. I came home flat broke and never spoke to anyone from the States again. I haven't told anyone else about the fly. I know how crazed and paranoid it all sounds. But that's what you do, right? If anyone in London is going to believe me, it’s you.

Speaking of London, I don't think you guys are safe from this thing either. I haven't seen it, but I still feel the eyes on me sometimes. Even on the walk over to this building, I felt like that fly had come back to watch me again.

Statement ends.  
_____________________________________________________________________________________  
ARCHIVIST

Yet another statement regarding the most subtle and ubiquitous aspect of the Eye. It has been called You-Are-Obvious, the Little Tattletale, or the Open Shade. Though in recent years, certain employees of the Magnus Institute have given it the more vulgar moniker "the Gaydar Bug" due to its modern focus on revealing people with queer identities to their conservative communities, and to its physical manifestation as a small fly.

Its modus operandi is to watch its victim during private moments, usually taking in some secret of a publicly controversial - typically sexual - nature. It then lingers around the victim, seemingly leaking the knowledge of the secret act it observed to those close to them. After several days of exposure, the associates of the victim will apparently come to know the victim’s secret in much the same way an Archivist might Know something. Paradoxically, they also express an intense compulsion to seek out evidence confirming the absolute knowledge of the victim they already possess. That compulsion brings them to the evidence they seek more often that not, and it almost invariably leads them to harass the victim in order to acquire it.

MARTIN

Wow. You know, I know the Eye isn't really our ally, but I didn't think it went that far. I'd hate to have run into this thing in middle school...

ARCHIVIST

A lot of people feel that way. That's why there's so many statements about it. Even conservative estimates put homosexuals at around five percent of the population. If you think of a religious little town of three thousand people, that's around one hundred fifty potential targets right there. Gertrude kept all these statements in a refrigerator box labeled 'suspicious flies.' I thought that was a typo until a read a few of them. I guess this one slipped through the cracks.

MARTIN

So this thing just flies around outing gay people for kicks?

ARCHIVIST

Yes, sort of. More so it seeks to reveal sources of shame to the groups that would react most extremely to them. According to Gertrude's old records, it used to spend much more time on infidelity before people started treating that more as a personal matter. It’s also revealed a couple of murderers and sex criminals, so it's not all bad.

MARTIN

Right. 'Not all bad.' Well, for me personally, it's not fun for me to think that we work for this thing's boss. I’ve been thinking about that, actually. Haven't you noticed that there seem to be a lot of us working for the Institute?

ARCHIVIST

What exactly do you mean 'a lot of us?'

MARTIN

I mean - Well - you know... queers? Queer people? Is that a good term? I mean there's you, me, Basira, Melanie, Paul in artifact storage, Bram upstairs, Jeremy, Martin Q, Sherry and Sheryl, Jack H. in maintenance. I mean, if you say we're like five or ten percent that's still pretty disproportionate, isn't it?"

ARCHIVIST

Your point being?

MARTIN

My point is 'why?' It’s an anomaly, Jon. It's anomalous! And I'm wondering if maybe, I dunno, the Eye has something to do with it? Ok, like, the Hunt - right? It draws in people who are into hunting and true crime and all that. And the Lonely draws in lonely people, obviously. Maybe the Eye draws in people like us?

ARCHIVIST

I don't quite see the connection.

MARTIN

I mean people who want to be seen, Jon. Or known or whatever. Everyone knows when a straight person is straight, right? Even if they don't actually know it. A straight person is never going to need to ask a straight person if they're straight. People just know that fact about them by assuming it.

But people like us? We're rare. Most people aren't just going to assume we are what we are, and with all the variance there is people can hardly be expected to guess. We have to tell people what we are before they can know it. And sometimes we don't want to have to do that, or maybe it takes something awkward happening for it to ever come up. Heck, sometimes it’s not even a good idea to say what we are.  
Maybe it's just me speaking for everyone, but it would be so much better to just be known. No conflict, no confrontation. People just know that I am what I am, and you are what you are, and there's no confusing it or hiding. I mean, I dunno, I’d like that.

ARCHIVIST

You may be onto something there, Martin. I can't say I disagree.

End recording.

[CLICK]


End file.
